What to Know About Vevolution Festival 2019
On Saturday, November 16, Form is proud to be sponsoring Vevolution Festival 2019 – a celebration of all-things plant-powered featuring inspiring talks, thought-provoking panels, engaging workshops and delicious vegan food.
Taking place at London’s BFI Southbank from 9 am to 5.30 pm, three stages and a dedicated workshop space will host some of the leading figures in plant-based business, while our Form lounge will provide a place to recalibrate amidst the excitement.
In the run-up to the hotly anticipated event, we caught up with Vevolution co-founder Damien Clarkson on what to expect from Vevolution festival this year, and all-things plant-based.
Why do you think 2019 has been such a huge year for the vegan and plant-based movement?
Honestly every year my fellow co-founder Judy and I stand on the Vevolution Festival stage and say we can’t believe all that has happened this year. The pace of awareness about plant-based living has been incredible.
A huge driver of plant-based living and veganism has been the democratisation of media. 15 years ago, people got most of their news from newspapers or established media. Now that information flows much more freely in society, people have been able to discover alternative ways of living with much greater ease.
And the professionalism of veganism has been a great accelerator of change, too. We have incredible creators like BOSH! who are showing people how to make great food, and companies like Form, BOL and Beyond Meat who are making plant-based products which taste great. Ultimately there has never been more information out there on how to live a plant-based lifestyle and if you make that choice you now have great products to choose from.
How did Vevolution get started?
Judy and I were big fans of TED Talks and after attending some events in the vegan world we felt like there was a need for an organisation dedicated to education and inspiration.
Our initial idea was to create what became Vevolution Festival 2016 as a showcase of a new vanguard of people driving forward the plant-based movement. It was a huge success, attracting 500 people to our first festival in East London. From that, the company Vevolution was born.
Since then we have delivered 28 events ranging from our Plant-Based Business Bootcamp to our investment competition, Pitch + Plant, and the annual Vevolution Festival which attracts 1,000 people from all around the world.
“Now that information flows much more freely in society, people have been able to discover alternative ways of living with much greater ease”
We have also fulfilled our goal of creating free educational content with a thriving weekly podcast, over 80 talks available to watch on YouTube for free, and this November we are launching a brand new podcast called The Plant-Based Podcast. Form founders Damian and Natalia are appearing on the show as guests!
What are you most looking forward to at Vevolution festival this year?
I am hosting several panel discussions focused on plant-based business which I am really looking forward to because it has been fantastic to see the plant-based economy grow rapidly over the past couple of years.
When we started Vevolution, it was because we were passionate about encouraging people to eat more plants and believed that there was a need for a global platform where people talked about the important issues of our time.
The growth of the Vevolution movement has been phenomenal and beyond our wildest dreams. Because the festival has become an international event, it is always refreshing to have people like our partners at Eat Drink Vegan from Los Angeles attend and share global perspectives on the big issues we are talking about.
If there’s one thing on the schedule you shouldn’t miss this year, what do you think it is?
We have athlete and entrepreneur Dominick Thompson joining us from Atlanta, Georgia to talk about toxic masculinity, which should be fascinating. I’m also really excited for our Founders panel happening on the main-stage, where we will be going deep on plant-based business success tips.
What do you think we’ll see a lot more of in this space come 2020?
Plants are here to stay! And the availability of plant-based products is only going to continue to grow. I think movies like The Game Changers will dramatically increase the number of people looking at shifting towards a plant-based lifestyle. There will be more innovations to come in plant-based protein as big money is now being put into its research and development. It is an exciting time to be involved in this movement!
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If you haven’t already got your ticket for Vevolution Festival 2019, get one while you can here.
